That Music List

Saturday, 6 June 2026

Straight In At... 06/06/2010 (originally published elsewhere)

Hello again,

As originally published on Twitter very early on in Straight In At...'s existence. Here are all of the new entries for the official singles chart of June 6th 2010, including a smattering of Eurovision content; a future conspiracy theorist; and some child stars' ongoing growing up in public. Enjoy.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 30/05/2026).

Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

GLEE CAST - Beth

New at #98. The (count them) 58th hit accredited to the Glee Cast out of the (count them again) 148 all told between 2009 and 2019. A Kiss cover from Season 1, Episode 20, as all devotees will know.

TOM DICE - Me and My Guitar

New at #85. Eurovision time! This finished sixth, and heralded the start of a strong decade for Belgium in the contest; Loïc Nottet, Laura Tessoro and Blanche would also attain top ten finishes.

JESSY MATADOR - Allez Ola Olé

New at #81. One of my absolute faves from Eurovision 2010. Zouk or ndombolo? Not sure. It deserved better than twelfth place for this energetic French-Congolese performer.

MADCON - Glow

New at #70. Not another Eurovision contestant, but rather the accompaniment to the Flashmob dance that comprised some of the interval entertainment during the final in their native Norway.

TINCHY STRYDER ft TINIE TEMPAH - Gangsta? (Game Over)
New at #67. A promotional single rather than an official one, a good six months ahead of parent album Third Strike. Grinding, determined and confident.

JUSTIN BIEBER ft USHER - Somebody to Love
New at #47. Originally offered to - and a demo recorded by - Usher, but ultimate instead the ninth solo or collaborative single of Justin’s UK breakthrough year. He hasn’t become any less ubiquitous since, of course.

LENA - Satellite
New at #30. Lena’s “fine line between puppy love and psychotic obsession” (Huffington Post) cleaned up at Eurovision 2010, curious accent and all. What Germany would give for a result like that now.

B.O.B. ft HAYLEY WILLIAMS - Airplanes
New at #23, and number one six weeks later. All about aeroplanes here, of course, as opposed to the drones, satellites, etc. this noted conspiracy theorist has since paid for to try to verify the Earth is flat.

MILEY CYRUS - Can't Be Tamed
Highest new entry at #13, and the lead track of a third album intended to distance Miley from the Hannah Montana persona. Could have been written with the cat on this Twitter banner in mind, actually...

LIST 257 - 06/06/2026 (Feature Fest #2)

Hello again,

Three months and twelve Lists on from the first Feature Fest, here's a sequel.

As you'll recall, the original Fest in List #245 attempted to include as many of this blog's 25 different regular features as running time would permit, and broadly succeeded. Although I've managed to squeeze in just 18 this time compared to 20 last, it still means that every feature has had at least one run out inside the last three weeks, which is job done as far as I'm concerned.

There is also an element of responding to demand here, believe it or not, as the first Fest has returned the third highest number of hits of anything I've put up since reactivating the blog, and the second highest of any List (the Eurovision 2026 piece is second highest overall). I'm not entirely sure why that should be. Perhaps I just chose unusually well that week?

Either way, such is the age profile of most of the stuff which gets included in the features that brand new tracks are thinner on the ground than usual (as per List #245 also), with the glorious exception of something out only this week from the very much back in action Patrick Wolf.

Absent for large chunks of the preceding decade plus due to various vicissitudes of life - burnout, being hit by a motorist, family illness, financial problems, etc. - a clutch of EPs and last year's cathartic, satisfyingly complex baroque pop treat Crying The Neck (his first long-player of totally new music since 2011) confirmed that the heart, and indeed the art, is still willing.

Fast forward to June 2026, and the forthcoming premiere of Wolf, a sensitive, moving yet unflinching biopic expertly narrated by Patrick's longstanding friend Tilda Swinton. It's set to be shown twice during Sheffield DocFest in the coming week, once each on Thursday 11th and Saturday 13th - assuming this advice doesn't come too late, ticket details can be found here.

The Beast isn't being billed as a single to promote the biopic, if the blurb on Patrick's YouTube feed is any guide, but rather as one side of a standalone 7" released this week on his own Apport imprint ahead of an American tour. Either way, it's a joy to include it, plus one dip into the past, here. And a joy of course to welcome him back generally.

It would be a joy, of course, to be able to welcome back the late lamented Tim Smith in person also, but the activity of the born-again Cardiacs and associated offshoots in the past couple of years in particular have well and truly done the next best thing. A year or so ago, who of you would have had them turning out at Primavera Sound this week just gone on your bingo cards? Be honest.

There's not been any new product as such to mark the Barcelona jaunt (dare we hope for a DVD of one of this winter's concerts back home?), but a message on The Consultant's Memorabilia Collection website alerted me to the news of a digipack reissue and light-touch remastering of Tim's one solo album, Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld. This was on the list to cover in A Loved Album sooner rather than later anyway, but in light of the week's developments this seems as perfect a time as any.

I can't think of any other album in my collection that exceeds its modest brief so emphatically. OceanLandWorld, very simply, is miles better than it actually needed to be.

Recorded between 1989 and 1991 - "by way of penance", to quote from a typically autocratic contemporaneous statement from Cardiacs' shadowy puppet-masters The Alphabet Business Concern upon its proper release in early 1995 - my understanding has always been that OceanLandWorld was intended solely to serve as something, anything, for Cardiacs (or Panixphere, or solo Tim) to sell at gigs whilst they were on their financial uppers.

The early 1990s were brutal for Cardiacs in general and Tim Smith in particular. Rough Trade's collapse took down the distribution of their 1992 album Heaven Born And Every Bright with it, rendering it virtually unbuyable for the thick end of three years after and leaving its main players out of pocket.

Production engagements, from Eat to Sidi Bou Said, would at least have helped keep the wolf from the door up to a point, and in the case of the latter act initiated a fruitful symbiotic relationship which would later on see Claire Lemmon and Melanie Woods become arms-length members of Cardiacs, but significant ones at that - Claire's unmistakable trills really helped make Sing to God favourites such as Dog Like Sparky and the immortal Dirty Boy.

Against this backdrop OceanLandWorld first saw the light of day. It's far less noisy than the rocky, power quartet Cardiacs were in the process of evolving into, and not necessarily just because of its largely bedroom MIDI-recording origins.

To me the overriding vision is less any sort of "Ocean" concept that the album's title may have implied (fewer than half of its ten tracks are especially aquatically themed), and more one of creating a suite of wildly inventive and eccentric, yet thoroughly accessible and coherent, charming art-pop (and you can be assured Tim regarded it as pop, as he genuinely did all of his output). There's not a throwaway doodle of a track to be found anywhere; Tim's commitment to the craft, even within the self-imposed strictures of this project, was absolute.

Although performances of any of OceanLandWorld's contents this century are few and far between, certain tracks, notably the relatively tender ballad Savour (beautifully covered by former Cardiac William D Drake in a subsequent Smith benefit compilation album), have subsequently become firm favourites among fans of the Smith canon taken as a whole.

I'd personally be very happy were present-day Cardiacs minded to have a stab at Ocean Heaven live one day. It'd totally work, assuming Jim can reproduce Tim's lithe, rubbery bassline. He can be sure Tim would be goading him from the beyond if he buggered it up.

You may also particularly enjoy:

Les Rita Mitsouko. Because sometimes it's possible to have a monster hit at home with a five and a half-minute long amalgam of squelchy electro-pop, chanson and bossa nova. As announcements of statements of intent go, this debut single from 1984 took some licking.

The involvement of krautrock/kosmische godhead Conny Plank as producer perhaps makes a bit more sense when considering his first job was as a soundman for Marlene Dietrich. Perhaps he saw something similar in Catherine Ringer's presence, voice or both. No more than a guess.

DJ Carl Cox with one of my very, very favourite tracks of any genre from 1992. Restless and labyrinthine, yet still a cohesive and fluent piece of work (especially compared to contemporaneous tracks from the likes of, say, Altern8, where you could really spot the joins), Does It Feel Good To You felt, and still feels, like a buffet of all of the things I'd really enjoyed in house, techno and acid up to that point.

Having to fight for space and attention at the same time as 'ardcore dance and cartoon techno were at their commercial apexes, its peaking at an undeservedly low 35 in the official singles chart was perhaps inevitable. For me, however, it's aged better than almost anything else of its kind from the era.

Incidentally, I was this many years, months and days old when I learned Carl was, like me, born in Oldham, though he is of course associated with other parts of the country, and indeed world, rather more.

almost certainly the first appearance of an Estonian performer on That Music List outside of a Eurovision context, in the shape of Velly Joonas, poet, painter and to all intents and purposes the godmother of Estonian soul.

A complete reworking of I See Red by Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Stopp, seisku aeg! features Velly's own lyrics on the vapidity of wealth and possessions, and an irresistible call and respond motif between a scraped violin and bubbly organ throughout which you'll be hearing in your sleep for days after.

Piccadilly Records in Manchester alighted upon the 7" reissue of this utter gem on Estonian crate-digging imprint Frotee in 2015; I'll be forever grateful that they did.

an instrumental from eventual Sarah Records and Vinyl Japan favourites St Christopher, as taken from their 1993 Dig Deep, Brother compilation. And for that release, dig deep they did, Rollercoaster being one of a number of hitherto unreleased gems on that compilation and played - to these ears, at least - primarily on a big theatre organ.

Would that have informed the song title, I wonder; did they record it in, or were inspired by, somewhere in Blackpool such as the Tower Ballroom? If memory serves the compilation's sleeve notes were noncommittal in that regard.

another instance of a Straight In At... date which has already been covered once before on my now mothballed Twitter feed of that name. Enjoy three selections (two of them Eurovision-oriented, for those of you which withdrawal symptoms) from the official singles chart of this date in 2010, or take a look at the singles reviews I wrote back then in full, also newly reproduced on this blog.

an attempt at either an unofficial theme tune for, or else an open love letter to, the Indietracks festival from Lisa Bouvier, performer there in 2014 both as a soloist and as the singer of the reactivated Flatmates. Every Year Until We Die sadly proved inaccurate, all of us having outlived this most perfect of indiepop events for five years and counting now...

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 03/06/2026).

Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.

Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
LIZZO - Juice (2019)

BULLETPROOF
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE –Know Your Enemy (1992)

THEN AND NOW: Patrick Wolf
PATRICK WOLF - The Beast (2026)
PATRICK WOLF - The Magic Position (2007)

A LOVED ALBUM: Tim Smith - Tim Smith’s Extra Special OceanLandWorld (1995)
TIM SMITH - England’s
TIM SMITH - Savour

FAVOURITE SONG OF THE YEAR: 2015
MBONGWANA STAR - Shégué

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
THE SNAPDRAGONS - The Things You Want (1988)

EUROTASTIC
VELLY JOONAS - Stopp, Seisku Aeg! (1983)

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
DIE STERNE – Du hast die Welt in deiner Hand (2002)

DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES
SCOTT BROWN - Healing Mind (1999)

A TANGLE OF JANGLE
BASIC PLUMBING – As You Disappear (2017)
14 ICED BEARS - Sure to See (1988)
THE GARLANDS - Continue (Demo) (2011)

WIR SIND DIE NEUEN GÖTTER
DIE FORM - Bite of God (1993)

SCIENTISTROCK
GROWING – Peace Offering (2006)

FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE

LES RITA MITSOUKO - Marcia Baïla (1984)

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
LISA BOUVIER - Every Year Until We Die (2013)

A LOVED ALBUM: Tim Smith - Tim Smith’s Extra Special OceanLandWorld (1995)
TIM SMITH - Exploded
TIM SMITH - Ocean Heaven

NO LANGUAGE IN OUR LUNGS
ST CHRISTOPHER - Rollercoaster (?/1993)

STRAIGHT IN AT… June 6th, 2010
JESSY MATADOR - Allez Ola Olé (81)
TINCHY STRYDER ft TINIE TEMPAH- Gangsta? (Game Over) (67)
LENA - Satellite (30)

I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER
DJ CARL COX - Does It Feel Good to You? (1992)

THE LONG GOODBYE
PROLAPSE - Three Wooden Heads (1997)

Saturday, 30 May 2026

Straight In At... 30/05/1999 (originally published elsewhere)

Hello again,

As originally published on Twitter in the first week of Straight In At...'s existence back in late-May 2021, if memory serves. Here are all of the new entries for the official singles chart of May 30th 1999, including a trance-pop staple; a Muppetational video; at least one next big thing (who ultimately weren't); and one boy band's final wheeze of life.

Yes, there were 25 new entries inside the top 100 that week. Such was the way of things around that time, and I don't believe this is even close to a record. Enjoy.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 18/05/2026).

Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

Red Light District – Did You Hear Me?
New at #100. One of around a zillion aliases of German producer Thorsten Stenzel (owner also of Planet Love and six other record labels), on IIRC a one-off collaboration with Taucher (Ralph Armand Beck) on this occasion. A perfectly pleasant trance track.

Fungus – Astronaut
New at #93. The second of five bottom-end top 100 hits for these Swedish pop-punkers. Food picked them up for their sophomore album, but their fortunes didn’t especially improve over here for that.

Super Motor Funk - Put Your Arms In The Air (Get Down On It)
New at #89. Would this have classed as Big Beat back in the day? A Kool & The Gang sample as expected, albeit you’ve got to wait over two minutes to get to it in this version; I’d have liked to have found the radio edit.

Jonny L – Raise
New at #83. Ubiquitous drum and bass guy, though with enough pop sensibilities to work with S Club, Dane Bowers and Victoria Beckham on occasion. Clattering, skittish beats, disembodied samples… I could listen to this sort of stuff all day.

Phil Fuldner – The Final
New at #82. A top ten hit in Germany and Austria, based on the soundtrack for the German redub of the 1978 Japanese anime version of the 1940s American pulp magazine hero Captain Future. Are you keeping up?

Doves – Sea EP
New at #80. The artists formerly known as Sub Sub, with to my mind still the best Doves track by absolute miles. A lot going on in the background – harmonica, 6-8 time, samples, dubby outro – but it all works. Claustrophobia done deftly. The dedication to the late Rob Gretton on the sleeve was a nice touch.

Six By Seven – July, August and Winter
New at #79. The enduring sound of Nottingham, on and off for 27 years now. Love the fact frontman Chris Olley once exhibited the photos he took from the back of a bike of every single English football league ground.

Fountains of Wayne – Red Dragon Tattoo
New at #78. From an ill-starred album based thematically on the Kinks and Springsteen, but which their label Atlantic didn’t understand on any level – more fool them. As with most Fountains tracks, way better than Stacy’s Mom. You know it is.

Aurora – Hear You Calling
New at #71. This would go top 20 on re-release a year later, albeit still before their hit cover of Duran Duran’s Ordinary World rather than off the back of it. Apparently Aurora hailed from Rotherham, giving the town something else by which to be remembered musically other than just Jive Bunny.

Younger Younger 28s – We’re Going Out
New at #61. Very briefly touted as a turn of the century Human League, but not the only act in this week’s lineup who fell foul of a record label losing interest in them quickly.

Further reading: Ashley Reaks of YY28s in his own words. https://www.electricityclub.co.uk/missing-action-younger-younger-28s/

A – Old Folks
New at #54. Old folks “can’t work computers”, apparently, which will come as a surprise to my 78 year-old mum who coordinated and delivered a sermon via Zoom the other day. As for A themselves, thank heavens for the “A (disambiguation)” page on Wikipedia.

3rd Storee – If Ever
New at #53. An early period support act for Britney Spears, with a debut eventually bound for the top ten. They all sound very young in this, almost as young as the following act had seven years earlier…

Ultimate Kaos – Anything You Want (I’ve Got It)
New at #52. The final sighting of the former boy (in the actual sense) band which included a son of Maxi Priest. Far less irksome than the likes of Some Girls, but rather less successful also.

Reef – Sweety
New at #46. A ninth single for Reef, but the first to miss the top 40. That's all you're getting on that one.

Mavericks – Someone Should Tell Her
New at #45. Another two Trampoline album-derived singles further down the road from Dance The Night Away, and diminishing commercial returns duly applying.

Jose Nunez ft Octahvia – Hold On
New at #44. New Jersey house from a gentleman known on occasion to have recorded under the name of Constipated Monkeys. Ouch.

Mike & The Mechanics – Now That You’re Gone
New at #35. The final top 40 hit, and with longstanding members leaving or – in the case of Paul Young – tragically passing away suddenly, not the happiest of times for this particular project.

Gay Dad – Joy!
New at #22. They were the future once… Charley Stone has at least compiled herself a fine portfolio as a guitarist gun for hire for the likes of Fosca, Linus, Desperate Journalist and Salad, to name just my favourites.

Underworld – Jumbo
New at #21. Subtler and more delicate than many Underworld tracks, and also like most Underworld tracks way less annoying than Born Slippy. You know it is.

Garbage – You Look So Fine
New at #19. Fifth and final single from the Version 2.0 album, and a set-closer for the duration of the accompanying tour. Orchestral addition inspired by the Titanic movie, I understand.

DJ Sakin & Friends – Nomansland (David’s Song)
New at #14. Hit two of three for Turkish-German producer Sakin Bozkurt, and no surprise to read this fared no less well back in Germany being a cover of a track by The Kelly Family (whom I cannot adequately describe in a single Tweet).

Shed Seven – Disco Down
New at #13. One of two originally planned releases from their singles collection. The non-release of the second, and the band’s refusal to acquiesce to a rerelease of another track barely three years old instead sped their departure from Polydor. Ah well.

Supergrass – Pumping On Your Stereo
New at #11. There were more interesting tracks on Supergrass’s third album than this, but oh, that video. Muppetational (for want of a better word) genius from the then prolific Hammer & Tongs, also responsible for the promos for Right Here, Right Now and Coffee & TV in the same year alone.

Chicane ft Maire Brennan – Saltwater
New at #6, and ever since a staple of tourist adverts and sporting events (horseracing adopted it as the Order of Merit on-course theme in the mid-late 2000s). That’s the old Gatecrasher One club in Sheffield in the video; already demolished just before my time in the city, unfortunately.

Jamiroquai – Canned Heat
New at #4. Finally, as also featured in the pre-assembly dance routine scene in Napoleon Dynamite. I could have prefixed that with “memorable”, only I’ve never seen the film…

Straight In At... 30/05/1982 (originally published elsewhere)

Hello again,

As originally published on Twitter in the first week of Straight In At...'s existence back in late-May 2021, if memory serves. Here are all of the new entries for the official singles chart of May 30th 1982, including two versions of the same song; lots of songs all stitched together to make one song; and the happiest ten-minute song you'll find. Enjoy.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 15/05/2026).

Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

THE BELLE STARS – Iko Iko
New at #74. Not the last time we’ll be hearing Iko Iko in this 1982 selection, and whilst this version peaked a lot lower than the other in the UK, it later went top 20 in the States after its appearance on the Rain Man soundtrack.

THE GAP BAND - Early in the Morning
New at #72. Actually their biggest hit in the US – way ahead of Oops Up Side Your Head, Big Fun and any others you might have thought were more obvious candidates. Taken from the erroneously entitled sixth album Gap Band IV.

BERTIE HIGGINS - Key Largo
New at #71. The signature track for this ‘40s movie-obsessed Floridan. This’ll make you feel soft rock…

MONSOON - Shakti
New at #62. The follow-up to Ever So Lonely. Frustratingly stalled at #41, and a further attempt to buy a hit with a cover of The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows after that fared no better for Sheila Chandra and co. than it did for the tremendous Danielle Dax eight years later.

RANDY CRAWFORD - One Hello
New at #58. A Carole Bayer Sager composition taken as the theme for I Ought to Be In Pictures, a Walter Matthau-fronted 1982 film adaptation of a Neil Simon play of two years prior. Not one of Siskel & Ebert’s favourites of the year, I read…

THE BEATLES – The Beatles Movie Medley
New at #56. Apparently a compilation cash-in (albeit one painstaked over by pioneering Hollywood sound engineer John Palladino), rather than just an attempt to ride the early-1980s medley bandwagon.

NATASHA - Iko Iko
New at #54. The artist then known by marriage as Natasha England, although actually Scottish – bit of a Frank Beard scenario there. This ultimately went top ten, the only version of this song ever to do so in the UK.

THE CARS - Since You’re Gone
New at #50. Very much how I’d prefer to remember The Cars as opposed to certain later soft rock efforts – a skittering, nervy, yet playful, post-New Wave love-gone-wrong song.

STEVIE WONDER - Do I Do
New at #42. The near ten minutes’ worth of total, unadulterated joy that rounds off Stevie’s 1982 singles compilation Original Musiquarium, Dizzy Gillespie cameo and knowingly bobbins rap outro and all. The music equivalent of a plus sign.

BOW WOW WOW - I Want Candy
Highest new entry at #38. To finish, BA Robertson’s chatshow nemesis Annabella Lwin (c.f. assorted TV Hell-type clip shows), and the second of her two top ten hits. Loving some of the Razzmatazz audience’s attempts to keep up with Dave Barbarossa’s drumming here.

LIST 256 - 30/05/2026

Hello again,

...And if this week's opening track doesn't have some of you of a certain age running away screaming (#iykyk), then you're all very welcome to another lovingly compiled virtual rummage through my music collection and recent discoveries.

A novelty this time around is the appearance of the same feature twice over, something which hasn't happened before now and, with 25 different features vying for my attention each List, isn't something I actively set out to do (albeit Feature Fest #2 next week will give most of them an outing anyway).

These are unique circumstances, however. May 2021 saw me launch my short-lived Twitter feed Straight in At... which, as regular viewers may remember, saw me review every new entry in the official singles chart for that day's date in a given year in the past.

Except, with me being eager to please and wanting to launch the feed with a bang, I ended up reviewing May 30th for both 1982 and 1999. Given the number of songs which that entailed, you can be certain that this was all I did that particular day!

As part of my ongoing attempts to move all of my previous music-oriented copy into the one place (wheresoever I can remember where I put it), all of the reviews for those two May 30ths have been given their own entry on this blog now - just click on the year links above.

It won't happen too often that I'll have previous Straight in At... copy which lands on a That Music List publication date - there are a maximum of four more such instances this calendar year - but wherever I can resurface stuff for people even more determined than me to eschew Twitter for all of the reasons anyone would want to nowadays, I shall try to do that.

From those two dates, I have added a few personal highlights in this week's List proper.

The 1982 choices serve as a reminder that The Cars were so much more than the globe-munching soft rock hit which followed a couple of years over, and also give us a minute or two to consider one of Britain's first genuine South Indian origin crossover stars in Sheila Chandra of Monsoon. Hers is a story of resilience in the face of horrible odds in most recent times, reinventing herself as a writer, mentor and coach after a debilitating and permanent onset of burning mouth syndrome killed her singing career stone dead and rendered speech of any sort nigh on impossible.

My selections from the May 30th 1999 assortment could have been full of Britpop era players continuing to rage against the dying of the light with varying degrees of success, but with 25 entries all told that week it wasn't hard to find alternatives I enjoyed more.

Hence some prime drum and bass from Jonny L; one of countless Underworld tracks I prefer to Born Slippy; another reminder of the gifts of the much-missed Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne; and a track from Doves which in my humble opinion they've never come close to bettering in a further 27 years' trying.

The last-named was on the in-store CD player (remember them?) when I popped into my then still-regular haunt Piccadilly Records to raid the 7" racks as usual, and it absolutely filled the room - the harmonica, six-eight time, samples, dubby outro, all of it.

Along with the very different Pop album by Gas (which I'll certainly be revisiting in these pages again before long), Sea Song sticks in my memory as something I never knew I was going to buy from Piccadilly until the day they hit me with it on entering the store. Serendipitous discoveries indeed.

Saturday, 23 May 2026

LIST 255 - 23/05/2026

Hello again,

Only a quick intro this week, as I'd otherwise be unable to resist churning out another four-figure total of words on the aftermath of Eurovision.

Suffice it to say for the time being that there are still things to look deeper into as regards voting (there are excellent legal reasons for my leaving it as obliquely as that); Sweden were out-Swedened by Denmark as predicted; and although I didn't go a bundle for Bulgaria personally, surely only those commentators who are unaware of Bangaranga's already well-established ubiquity on TikTok are still calling its win a shock.

There was no Iceland at Eurovision this year, of course, but with impeccable timing the fortnight before it saw the release of the first album in three years from Daði Freyr, who was of course the moral victor in 2020.

But for the pandemic, who knows how much bigger a global name he might have become off the back of Think About Things. He's still a star in my world, at least.

It's a joy to be able to include the video for his latest single, which dropped as recently as Wednesday of last week. Shades of Be Mine by David Gray thematically, or if you prefer, of the train sketch in The Young Ones.

Saturday, 16 May 2026

LIST 254 – 16/05/2026 (Eurovision Special)

Hello all,

For those of you (there must be some?) who have been keeping count across the two lifetimes of That Music List, you'll know already that today's offering represents the fourth ever Eurovision Song Contest special, following on from Lists #157 (2015), #202 (2016) and #236 (2018).

I'll be perfectly honest - I didn't think I had another one of these in me, all the more so with the running time of the Lists having increased from almost 80 minutes to almost 120 minutes since I came back, bringing with it a resultant need to find 50 percent more tracks. Even allowing for the extended videos for the two contributions from a certain much-loved Icelandic act, that was always likely to equate to around 35 or 36 songs all told.

I ought not have worried. There were plenty enough highlights among the line-up from this year's Eurovision, added to those favourites of mine from the seven other renewals to have taken place during That Music List's hiatus (yes, I'm including the 2020 edition that sort of never was), to nourish a complete list.

Whether there'll be another such special this time year, however, I somehow doubt, short of mining both National Finals for lost gems among the non-winners and pre-millennium Contests to a far greater extent than ever previously.

Here then, are my choices from 2019 to 2026 inclusive.

By my maths 24 nations are represented in total. There's nothing from the UK, though I suppose Look Mum No Computer from this year came closer than any.

There are a handful that split the jury in this household; I suspect I'll never be able to convince my nearest and dearest of the fragile beauty of Zalagasper or Maro, but that's fine.

There is even one stone cold last place finisher in Circus Mircus (the lowest scorer in either semi-final in 2022) that I swear would have been embraced by BBC Radio 6 Music had it been submitted not to Eurovision, but instead to that radio station bearing a label marked "new project from Beta Band alumni" or similar. Yep, that's today's hill on which I'm quite prepared to die.

Regular List features are in thinner supply than usual, as the confines of this particular special don't lend themselves to too many of them. In addition, whilst there was the notional possibility of doing a Then And Now with any of this year's returning acts, I liked all of Vanilla Ninja, Senhit and Bzikebi's new numbers far less than their old ones, and I'm afraid Delta Goodrem has never done a thing for me. Ah well!

Instead, and having talked about Brainstorm in the context of the Contest's subsequent near-total aversion to indiepop during my That Eurovision Review 2026, I wondered whether they were still a going concern. Turns out they very much are, with new work - and an accompanying bittersweet video - out only last year. That seemed cause enough to give the occasional Yes, They Did Other Songs As Well feature an unexpected run-out.

That aside, think of today's List as an extended Eurotastic, with the frequent German and French language song features also included.

However you choose to do Eurovision - be that curled up in bed with a drink and the laptop like us, or actually in Vienna itself like a friend or three of ours - I wish you a very pleasant few hours' entertainment.

My work for Eurovision 2026 is almost done now, with just my scoresheets and patented bingo cards to distribute to them as wants them.